The Philadelphia Convention in 1787 - North American Colonies

and thanks of the people whom he, beyond all others, had contributed to make an independent nation.

The first business to be undertaken was the formation of a system of rule, as to which men's minds were greatly divided. The separate States were jealous of each other, and many people were opposed to the formation of a national government, with large powers vested in a Congress. A convention was called to Philadelphia in 1787, with Washington as its president, and lengthy deliberations ended in the adoption of a new constitution, which came into operation two years later. The constitution of Great Britain was the model chosen by the organizers of a system of rule for the new power. The chief aim was to separate the Executive, the Legislative, and the Judicial functions. In the mother-country, the sovereign and the ministers were the executive department of administration. The legislative powers lay with Parliament. The judges, during good behaviour, were independent of both, and secure in their exalted and important positions. The needful express provision for the circumstances of the case in hand was that by which local powers were reserved for the several States, who agreed to resign to a central authority certain rights of action expressed in a strictly definite bond of federal union.

In accordance with their pattern, thus modified, the President became an elective sovereign, chosen for four years' tenure of office, by electors chosen from each state in numbers proportioned to population. These electoral delegates were supposed to represent the flower of the citizens in wisdom and fitness to choose a temporary ruler. In fact, they are themselves chosen as men who are pledged to the support of one of the particular candidates, Democratic or Republican, already nominated by opposite parties. A vice-president for four years is chosen in the same way. The President's executive powers are those of a constitutional sovereign in regard to peace and war, the issue of coinage and notes, but he possesses and uses a power long become obsolete in Great Britain, that of vetoing bills of Congress, unless they are passed by a two-thirds majority in both houses. The Secretaries of State and other ministers are selected by him; they do not, like our Cabinet and some other high officials, sit in the Parliament.

Featured Books

Ireland’s Welcome to the Stranger (also onKindle) is an American widow’s account of her travels in Ireland in 1844–45 on the eve of the Great Famine. Sailing from New York, she set out to determine the condition of the Irish poor and discover why so many were emigrating to her home country. Mrs Nicholson’s recollections of her tour among the peasantry are still revealing and gripping today. The author returned to Ireland in 1847–49 to help with famine relief and recorded those experiences in the rather harrowingAnnals of the Famine in Ireland (Kindle version here).

Annals of the Famine in Ireland is Asenath Nicholson's sequel to Ireland's Welcome to the Stranger. The undaunted American widow returned to Ireland in the midst of the Great Famine and helped organise relief for the destitute and hungry. Her account is not a history of the famine, but personal eyewitness testimony to the suffering it caused. For that reason, it conveys the reality of the calamity in a much more telling way. The book is also available in Kindle.

The Scotch-Irish in America tells the story of how the hardy breed of men and women, who in America came to be known as the ‘Scotch-Irish’, was forged in the north of Ireland during the seventeenth century. It relates the circumstances under which the great exodus to the New World began, the trials and tribulations faced by these tough American pioneers and the enduring influence they came to exert on the politics, education and religion of the country.